I do think my mother was a bit overprotective, not in any sordid way, but just normally. She certainly might say to me, "You know, Laura, I don't have a good feeling about that guy. I don't know if I want you to go out with him."

The actors are telling the truth on some level, and people have to believe it. At Cannes, a lot of people said, "Oh, shocking," but this Italian girl said to me, "My god, I just said that to my boyfriend the other night." That's what Lula from Wild at hearts talks about. That's life - to turn each other on, to feel good, to feel in love.

People have forever been interested in twins.

I'm very connected to my own family, and maybe I like to explore the feelings that come up in families. I'm fortunate that my parents taught me to look further into why I might feel a certain way; it was normal to expose things.

It's interesting to talk to my mom about her character in Wild at heart, because she sees her as a mother who's just trying to protect her baby from a bad boy. I think that's why it works so beautifully - she has conviction about what she's doing.

In Smooth Talk it was a much more intuitive search - I was only 17 at the time, and I wasn't aware, as women are when they get a little older, that there's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks. We all have an attraction to what's different from us.

I left our home to work on a movie, and while I was away, my boyfriend [Billy Bob Thorton] got married, and I've never heard from him again.